How do you backup your work?

Adam Ladd

Been thinking about this recently and just read Nick Cooke's comment/blog about losing a month of work on Exentrica due to his Mac and Time Machine malfunctioning.

I use Time Machine currently (automatic backups hourly), but I've considered Drop Box premium—either to replace or in addition to TM.

What do you use or like to do? TM is easy on one hand, but the massive 1+GB frequent backups it does gets cumbersome.

Craig Eliason

In addition to Time Machine I use both local and remote git repositories. Learned a lot about setting it up (for Glyphs) from this forum thread.

Thomas Phinney

For my current active projects, I have local copies of things, plus use local and remote Git. Any old stuff that is not in Git, is in directories backed up by DropBox or Google Drive.

Git used to be something I only did for projects for Google because they required it, but I am sold on using it as a general workflow, so I recently set up a repo for an ongoing non-Google project as well.

Adam Ladd

Helps to hear so far... I tend to use hourly Time Machine for everything since it backs up the whole computer, as well as current projects. The free tier of DropBox is nice for current projects, but not sure how secure or reliable it is to keep files retrievable in case of a crash. Git will be good to look into more.

Ray Larabie

On Windows, I use DropBox (2TB account). OneDrive for a few smaller files like font metadata.

Nightly, the contents of Dropbox and OneDrive are backed up on a separate physical drive using Iperius Backup. Annually, I dig out my box of old hard drives and use one of those USB SATA docks where you can hot swap. I back up critical files to those. About twice a decade, I burn a stack of DVD ROMs.

Dropbox has saved me many times. I can restore previous versions and easily access files on my phone/tablet from anywhere in the world.

Mark Simonson

In addition to hourly Time Machine backups to a NAS, I have all my font-related work (plus a bunch of other stuff) in Dropbox where I'm paying for 2TB for $120 per year. Between the two, I've never lost any data. If I accidentally save over something, I usually use Time Machine to retrieve it. With Time Machine, I can restore my whole setup if something catastrophic happens to my computer (and I have had to use this several times). Dropbox is mainly a fallback for peace of mind. It's also easy to share stuff with others using it.

Thomas Phinney

Being able to get specific older versions from backups is super helpful, on top of having backups of my current work. I do not need this super often, but maybe a couple of times a year this is highly important in my work.

Github of course has version control and infinite versions built in.

With my DropBox account, I have paid for the extra option that includes old versions of files, not just the latest. Anybody using DropBox as part of their setup should consider paying the extra bit for this feature, so you can access older versions of “the same” files.

John Hudson

Two local external backup drives in rotation.

Most font projects in git repositories.

Everything also backed up automatically to secure encrypted servers in Switzerland via Tresorit.

James Montalbano

While I still use Time Machine, its shortcomings led me to also use Carbon Copy Cloner backing up to external disks.

Jasper de Waard

DropBox (for everything basically, not just type). I think the only arguments against it are:
- Privacy (but honestly who's gonna steal your fonts in progress?)
- Money (but easily worth the saved headaches if you can spare it)
- Environment (servers use electricity, and a lot of it, but thankfully fonts are relatively small in file size)

James Puckett

I use Time Machine for a local backup, it goes to a 4TB SSD half the size of my phone so it’s portable. For remote backups I use Dropbox. Every now and then I dump stuff to a blu-ray disc, but that option is going away as nobody makes writable blu-ray media anymore.

John Hudson

Re. DropBox, I have had clients specifically require me not to use DropBox because of security concerns.

Thomas Phinney

Having done more research, I realize that I will need to migrate off of DropBox to a more secure system, at least for my more confidential work.

Although Sony is stopping producing writeable blu-ray discs, there are many other manufacturers in this market at present, and the patents are expiring (this year and next), so I expect one will be able to buy writeable blu-ray discs for some time yet. Although in the long term, sure, new writeable blu-ray discs will go away... maybe even in just a single-digit number of years.

Eris Alar

Why use optical media when solid state options like usb sticks and SD cards exist, have larger capacity, and AFAIK have a longer shelf life?

jeremy tribby

depending on the format, optical media can last substantially longer. the M-DISC format in particular, which is supported by some blu-ray and dvd writers, lasts 1000 years. it's a great option (when combined with others) for long term archival storage
for local backups (both time machine, and more long term archives that aren't tied to any one machine) I have a 4-disk NAS in RAID10 so two disks can fail at once without issue. that gets encrypted and backed up to the cloud as well. I do have my font projects hosted on github too

James Hultquist-Todd

I print out each .glif file for every character in each of my .ufos, put them in a glass bottle, and throw them into the ocean.

Honestly, I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Backblaze. I've been using it for a long time, backing our machines up hourly via Arq, as well as a local backup, Time Machine, and iCloud.

Jesse R Ewing

Seconding Backblaze. It's saved me a few times now. I also use Time Machine but it hasn't been entirely reliable. And then manual backups to SSD and HDD.

Adam Ladd

Backblaze looks interesting, yeah, had not heard of it. I like the device syncing/accessibility of Dropbox if working on a file on different machines, but it sounds like a form of this might be done going through the web with BB(?).

jeremy tribby

backblaze is great. they have written some blogs about their infrastructure and it's really impressive. they are being a little disingenuous with that comparison chart, though; their most direct competitor for unlimited backups is crashplan, which costs around the same and has some additional features like linux support and the ability to retrieve backups in a way that doesn't involve large ZIP files. crashplan also has some downsides; the interface is worse, you can't get a drive shipped to you, and uploads are really slow

John Butler

In a Windows desktop or a Windows laptop that can house at least two internal drives, the most bulletproof method I know is periodic full disk backups to a second physical drive. Keeping the drive internal also makes it bootable—Windows goes out of its way to prevent you from booting from an external USB drive, for fear of lost Windows license revenue. Use Volume Shadow Copy, or a commercial front end to it like Casper.

Plenty of 15 inch and larger laptops these days have at least two internal M.2 slots, the second one unoccupied, and you just buy a second SSD and install it in that slot.

Jasper de Waard

@John Butler This doesn't seem particularly bullet proof to me. What if the laptop gets stolen, lost, or heavily damaged?

James Puckett

I echo what Jasper said. There’s a reason people dump their data to tape and pay Iron Mountain to store it in concrete vaults.

bdevos

Thomas Phinney said:

Having done more research, I realize that I will need to migrate off of DropBox to a more secure system, at least for my more confidential work.

Can you share what lead you to this conclusion, and does this conclusion apply to other cloud drives (OneDrive, Google Drive, Box, etc.)? I am not doubting you, just trying to learn. For font projects the following might not be an issue, but for some of my data, it is very helpful to be able to edit data from a mobile device, and such editing seems to require the use of a cloud drive. Or can I use, let's say, Excel for iOS and have Excel save files to something like Tresorit.

John Hudson

Or can I use, let's say, Excel for iOS and have Excel save files to something like Tresorit.

Tresorit will sync any folders you specify, so you can save the file on one device, it will sync to Tresorit, and then to your other devices. The only drawback with this system is that if you are using Tresorit for general backup the syncing can take a long time and there is no way to prioritise a particular file. I found this made Tresorit less than ideal for active collaboration (you can share access to specific Tresorit folders) or for quickly moving files between devices. So I use Tresorit for backup and use GitHub for file transfers and project collaboration.

Thomas Phinney

@bdevos

Basically, any cloud-based service in which anyone besides you has access to the encryption keys and process... is less secure. One in which the cloud host is just blindly handling data and couldn’t decrypt it if they wanted to, and YOU are the only one with the keys is considerably more secure.

In the case of Dropbox, they do data minimization tricks like if multiple users have the same file, they only store it once. This means (1) they have to at least look at and presumably store unencrypted versions of your data, and (2) they actively track data about who all has “the same” file. These are significant security issues.

If your cloud service is just one of several backup methods, this issue is not so big a worry in terms of “somebody could hack this and hold my data for ransom.” However, you also need to consider how important data privacy is to you. For me, I do highly sensitive legal work which often has moderately high stakes (e.g. $1M) and once in a while has VERY high stakes (e.g. $1B), I need to be very aware about the possibility of targeted intrusion, and at least take reasonable precautions.

John Butler

Jasper de Waard said:

@John Butler This doesn't seem particularly bullet proof to me. What if the laptop gets stolen, lost, or heavily damaged?

Yes, of course, you should back it up somewhere physically external as well, and the method I describe doesn’t prevent you from doing that. But good luck getting that external backup bootable if you’re using Windows. As for Macs, I know it was easy ten years ago, and hopefully they haven’t changed that since then.

Mark Simonson

As for Macs, I know it was easy ten years ago, and hopefully they haven’t changed that since then.

Still possible: https://support.apple.com/en-us/111336